Someone knocked at the door, and that knocking vibrated through my brain and set me wide-awake, indeed.
It was as the signal to uplift the curtain and let my play-acting commence.
Hastily I rose and shot a glance at the mirror to see that my wig hung straight and that my mask was rightly adjusted.

I started at my own reflection, for methought that from the glass 't was St.Auban who looked at me, as I had seen him look the night before when he had donned those things at my command.
"Hola there, within!" came Montresor's voice.

"Monsieur le Capitaine!" A fresh shower of blows descended on the oak panels.
I yawned with prodigious sonority, and overturned a chair with my foot.
Then bracing myself for the ordeal, through which I looked to what scant information I possessed and my own mother wit, to bear me successfully, I strode across to admit my visitor.
Muffling my voice, as I had heard St.Auban do at the inn, by drawing my nether lip over my teeth-- "Pardieu!" quoth I, as I opened the door, "it seems, Lieutenant, that I must have fallen asleep over those musty documents." I trembled as I watched him, waiting for his reply, and I thanked Heaven that in the role I had assumed a mask was worn, not only because it hid my features, but because it hid the emotions which these might have betrayed.
"I was beginning to fear," he replied coldly, and without so much as looking at me, "that worse had befallen you." I breathed again.
"You mean-- ?" "Pooh, nothing," said he half contemptuously.

"Only methinks 't were well whilst we remain at Canaples that you do not spend your nights in a room within such easy access of the terrace." "Your advice no doubt is sound, but as I shall not spend another night at Canaples, it comes too late." "You mean, Monsieur-- ?" "That we set out for Paris to-day." He shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, ca! I have just visited the stables, and there are not four horses fit for the journey.

So that unless you have in mind the purchase of fresh animals--" "Pish! My purse is not bottomless," I broke in, repeating the very words that I heard St.Auban utter.
"So you said once before, Monsieur.